Knott’s Farm Fondly Recalled

* The Oct. 22 news of the sale of Knott’s Berry Farm brought back a flood of memories for me.

For several years during the 1960s, on her birthday, I took my daughter for a day at the “Farm.” In the mid-1970s, I appeared at the Bird Cage Theatre as Edgar Allan Poe as part of the Halloween festivities.

But the warmest memory is the Fourth of July program in 1975, when in front of Independence Hall before a crowd of several hundred people I rode an impressive stallion--a gray, if memory serves--dismounted and took the podium to read lines from the Declaration of Independence.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Walter Knott was in the audience. Several days later when I visited the Farm to return my costume, he was sitting in his wheelchair, basking in the warm summer sun just outside his trailer. He beckoned, indicating he wanted to speak to me. I walked to his side. He offered a frail hand to shake and told me how much he had enjoyed my part of the holiday presentation. I was overwhelmed--still am to this day so many years later, particularly since I shared the stage with the featured speaker.

I’ve often wondered if Mr. Knott slipped a handful of passes to Sen. Jesse Helms as he did to me! And I still have them.

THOMAS VIZE

Santa Ana